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Nick Bacque: Optimism
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“It sucked,” he says.
Bacque is, however, encouraged by the abundance of calls he has received from outside business interests and entrepreneurs since beginning his run for mayor, an experience he describes as both positive and fun and one that has enabled him to meet an estimated 100 cool new people a day, including yours truly, of course.
“Economic stimulus has to happen – new investments, low interest loans, tax breaks,” Bacque says, “because once the billions in federal and outside aid dry up, we’re going to be a stagnant cesspool if we don’t act now.”
Bacque favors phasing out the Corps of Engineers and utilizing a competitive bidding system to contract engineers who will do the best job of bolstering and reconstructing the levees to Category 5-level protection – for the best price.
“It’s all about stimulating the economy: how do we roll out right now?”
Bacque is confident we’ll get the federal money we need to recover, but wants these funds spent properly, one of the reasons he decided to run. He also ran to spotlight and hopefully involve the age 18-30 demographic in rebuilding the city, especially as businesses large and small, older residents and schools either shut down or remain shuttered, whether metaphorically or literally in, for example, abandoned and subsequently flooded nursing homes.
“The message is one no one can really refute: we need tangible incentives to get young people involved. Families and small businesses are leaving; it’s got to be young people,” Bacque says.
Bacque, 24, has a Bachelors in biomedical engineering from Tulane, an MBA in finance and management, several Masters, and is working through the medical portion of a combined medical doctorate, as well as being president of Tulane’s Graduate and Professional School, holding a seat on Tulane’s Senate and Board, and a criminal defense paralegal who handles finances for a local real estate development firm.
“My education helps,” he says. “I’m obviously not an idiot.”
For such a busy, smart young feller, he sure smiles a lot – the seeming epitome of an optimist, gleaming among the 20 bags of garbage awaiting Monday pickup not 15 feet away. Is there ecstasy in his water? Laughing gas being piped into his – and C. Ray’s – building?
If so, I want some; whatever I’m breathing in the fire-torn Lower Garden District has ripped my throat to shreds and reduced my once mildly asthmatic yet functional lungs to papier mache. When I press Bacque on what exactly we’re breathing – surely, the level of toxins and contaminants has jumped - he attributes Katrina-induced health problems to stress. I furtively eye the inhaler wedged in my purse, wishing it was as conducive to stress relief as more natural medicinal wonders.
Stress may also be what drove our current mayor to make some of the stranger comments in his now infamous MLK Day speech.
“I think he’s done a good job,” says Bacque, “and everyone else did, too…until the Chocolate City speech,” he adds, stopping shy of any endorsement, which he says he will grant his favorite candidate – outside of, well, himself, I’d imagine – as the April 22 election draws closer.
“It’s the people that encourage me,” Bacque says in answer to my indifference. “I don’t believe in party politics – everyone’s fighting yes/no, black/white questions when everything’s a ‘maybe’ answer.”
He strongly believes that the two-party system, like the Corps of Engineers, will be made obsolete by up-and-coming, younger generations.
“The apathy of the ‘Kurt Cobain generation’ is over,” he adds later.
It’s fun to lose and to pretend.—K.C.
Lisa Haviland, a.k.a. AHazeAblaze, is a published poet, prose writer and closet ninja.
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